


Something's Got You Up All Night, So Tell Me Who You Gonna Call

by Quenlin Deorres (orphan_account)



Category: Ghostbusters (2016)
Genre: Everyone Is Gay, Ghosts, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-30
Updated: 2016-07-30
Packaged: 2018-07-26 02:45:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7557052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/Quenlin%20Deorres
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the ghost-filled New York incident that sky-rocketed the Ghostbusters' popularity, a few solemn spirits have stubbornly evaded captivity. Coleman Bohn, hot, rich and supernaturally gifted, finds himself in a predicament that due to a night of partying and ouija-induced shenanigans is in desperate need of some ghost bustin'. Who better to call than the Conductors of the Metaphysical Examination?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Something's Got You Up All Night, So Tell Me Who You Gonna Call

**Author's Note:**

> "The whole time I just been cut from different cloth,  
> This is Cashmere, is that clear?  
> Catching paper cuts from the paper I've counted the past year,  
> A monster, a beast, except I'm nastier,  
> Swift you need a favor? Then put your cash here."
> 
> G-Eazy - Saw It Coming ft. Jeremih

**Something's Got You Up At Night, So Tell Me _Who You Gonna Call_**

 

 

I paced anxiously while I waited. It was terrified, the gnawing feeling of knowing _it_ was here while I was defenselessly open and vulnerable. I had always known I was... different. The other kids in class didn't know the teacher had lost her father just two days earlier and she was still waiting to hear back from her grief-stricken mother who hadn't willed herself to pick up the phone (or leave her husband's blanch corpse yet). Little  _subtle_ things like that clued me in. Eventually, after therapy for a large chunk of my tween years, some parapsychology professors found me and successfully proved my ESP.

This extrasensory perception included, but was not limited to, clairsentience and audience. They assured me my clairvoyance would reach my other senses as I matured. I could already feel and hear ghosts, eventually I would be able to detect them by smell, taste and even instrinsic knowledge without knowing exactly how I knew they were there. That was an ability all mediums had, claircognizance. I could only see them when they presented themselves to me but I didn't know if this would change as I got older. The professors never explained that to me and I didn't ask.

My parents knew. They smiled and nodded when the professors told them and explained to them my uniqueness and how they wanted to further explore what I could do. They told them they'd think about their research grant offer, but as soon as their car sped off the driveway they sent me to boarding school. It wasn't until a few days ago, when the Ghostbusters expelled all those ghosts from Time Square, that they actually believed me. To celebrate, I had all my college friends come to my house for a party.

The rents were out of town, visiting mother's side of the family in New Jersey (ick, I know, but Anne Hathaway's from there so you can't really say shit). When I say it got wild, I mean more so than the raunchiest rendition of  _Girls Gone Wild II: Spring Break Edition_. Long story short; weed, hormones and ouija boards don't mix. Especially after an apocalyptic ghost phenomenon that may have missed a few slippery neon-bright buggers from the vortex that they were churned out of.

* * *

Patty parked her uncle's car, now their official Ghostbusting vehicle, in a dangerously parallel angle to the curb. She popped the door open and rushed out. Her backpack bobbed behind her comically. 

Abby, hesitantly, stuck her head out the car window. She called out, softly, "Uh, P-Patty? Hey, yeah, sweetie. You left the car a little hazardously parked, don't cha think?"

She guffawed brazenly. "Girl, there is a ghost in that Scooby Doo looking mansion and you're talking about my parking skills?" She shook herself violently in disbelief, pursing her lips at her teammate.

Erin looked over at Abby, raising a shoulder. "She has a point." She said neutrally.

"Heigh ho, heigh ho, off to slay ghosts we _go_." Holtz sang in a mockingly obnoxious voice, throwing one foot out the car door then reeling backwards.

A tall, blonde, musclebound yet oddly lean man materialised in front of her. His grin was unflatteringly broad. He wore the same orange striped jumpsuits the girls wore, but his was wrapped tightly around his trim waist showing only a thin white tee which did little to cover the flat planes of his visibly sculpted muscles underneath. "Hey, gang."

Abby groaned. "Ugh, Kevin, how many times have we told you not to follow us on your motorcycle--" She began.

Erin had opened her mouth to protest, to say that they could always use a fifth pair of hands even if those hands were manicured and not weilding proton wands and above them were the most deliciously veined forearms Erin had ever witnessed--but that was _so not_  the reason she wanted to keep Kevin around because that would be inappropriate. He could get up to less trouble with them than in the lab where last time he has blown the hinges off of one of Holtz's experimental flying backpacks. She didn't have time to articulate her words properly, only blabbering incoherently as she gazed into those star-filled blue eyes of his, when something startled them all.

A shrill scream ripped from hoarse vocal cords tore through the house they were parked in front of.

Patty was the first one to reach the door, with her longer athletic legs. She dashed away as soon as she heard the call. Erin leapt out the car and unsuccessfully attempted to stay on her friend's dust-emitting heels. Felt like middle school P.E. all over again. Especially with Holtz not even breaking a sweat as she sprinted forward, pierced tongue waving out her mouth like a dog's, and hoisted her proton wand out at the ready.

Abby, who had struggled to throw open the door Kevin was blocking, savagely vocalised her frustration of being stuck behind the secretary as she ran. "You big... Argh!" She hollered. _Beautiful specimen,_ Erin finished in her head while in reality it had been a much cruder profanity. He didn't seem to notice, however, as he continued to casually stroll behind Erin who had fallen behind.

The door cracked open with the full brunt force of Patty's shoulder. As soon as she stepped through the threshold, a slim boy who was a full head shorter than her wrapped his arms around her. "Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you." He panted.

She awkwardly patted his back, juggling her proton wand in the other hand. "You're... Uh, welcome?"

"Oh," He laughed, wiping a finger under his eye, "You stepped on a spider."

Patty did a double-take. "Is that why you screamed?"

He nodded.

Holtz, who had been listening intently from the doorway, was bodied by Kevin from behind her. He was shoved through, into the mansion, by Abby. "You ass!" She exclaimed.

"What about his, er, his ass?" Erin asked bashfully. Holtz elbowed Abby suggestively, who rolled her eyes so aggressively you could have heard it from a mile away.

He lugged through the gathered group of women, past Patty, and stood toe-to-toe with the boy. "Hi." Kevin said, lewdly looking him up and down.

"Oh, uh, wow." The boy sputtered.

"That's what Erin said." Patty jested to Holtz, who held in a laugh that sounded like a burp.

"I can... I can see your..." He waved his hands in front of Kevin's chest, flapping them wildly. Kevin looked down, oblivious, before the boy settled on, "Nipples. Your nipples. Oh gosh." He cringed and turned away.

Abby turned to Erin and whispered, "I've noticed that, too, what is he always cold?"

Kevin tapped the boy's shoulder. "You're very attractive." He said flatly.

"You're very forward." The boy countered. "I'm sorry," He said, over Kevin's brawny shoulder, "Is he a Ghostbuster?"

"No." They said, in unison.

"Yes." Kevin said eagerly.

"Stop flirting with the client, Kev." Holtz chastised, a sunny smile on her face. "Seriously," She said, still smiling.

"That was flirting?" Erin whispered back, to Abby.

"Ever consider Kevin's not into you because he swings for the other team?" She offered.

Erin made a face. "Into me? I'm not into him, into, Kevin, I mean--"

"Erin?" Kevin asked.

"Yeah?" She sighed, breathy and flustered. "Dammit." Erin cursed under her breath at Abby's pointedly high-raised brows.

"Wanna do your sciencey thing while I talk to the client." Kevin said, taking the boy's hand and lacing it through his own. The boy's face went beet-red.

"I'll help." Patty, intrusively, said as she wedged herself between them.

* * *

As Dr. Holtzman, Dr. Gilbert and Dr. Yates set up some ghost-tracking devices around the house, I took Mr. Beckman and Ms. Tolan to the ground floor guest bedroom. I sat on the edge of the made-up bed, waving at the leather chairs that sat at the desk. Ms. Tolan sat in one, setting her pack down, but Mr. Beckman made an active desiscion to sit as close to me on the bed as possible. Thigh-to-thigh. I could smell his titilating aftershave.

Ms. Tolan eyed him up. He stared back, blankly. "So, Mr... Bohn, was it?"

"Yes, Coleman Bohn."

"Like James Bond." Mr. Beckman giggled. "Nice."

"When did the aparations start materialising?" She asked, voice edgy. She was purposefully trying to ignore her associate. "When you called you said you had a party and you thought the ghosts were attracted to it?"

I collected my thoughts. "No. They weren't attracted to the party, although we did use a ouija board. I think the ghosts are attracted to... To me."

"That's cool." Kevin said dismissively, "Are you single?"

Patty bristled.

* * *

"What're you reading, over there, Abby?" Erin asked, seeing the telltale red glow of Abby's spinning meter. It always did sort of remind her of her mother's electronic whisk, but Abby wielded it more like a weapon than a kitchen tool.

"It's... Odd. To say the least." She replied curtly, checking the diameter of the energy radius circling her gadget.

Holtz looked up from her kneeling position on the floor. Her new experimental entrapment had been unloaded from her pack, but was far more difficult to navigate than a proton wand. She had assembled the contraption shortly after the pseudo-apocalypse in Times Square. Much like the device she created for Patty, it sucked in ectoplasmic energies it sensed like a vacuum. The churning innards of the small Pandora's Box-esque machine evaporated whatever it sucked in with an efficient neutralisation. What she hadn't anticipated was that the energies present in the house weren't all ghost energies.

Abby's device shifted from a devil red to a neon green. Her face paled. "Uh, guys!" She began, warningly.

A staccato of abrupt beeps and clicks coalesced from the haywiring machine.

Patty had just walked back into the living quarters, with the boy trailing behind her. His flustered face was direct juxtaposition to Kevin's wolffish smile. "Woah!" Patty rumbled. "Is that thing supposed to do that?"

Experimentally, Abby wandered across the creaky floorboards. Of course the floorboards were creaky, this house was practically a set for _The Conjuring_ , Erin thought sarcastically. The enjoyment behind Holtzmann's eyes made her uncertain. She loved the blonde woman like a sister, but sometimes her ethic morality became compromised by her... Scientific curiosity. Like Victor Frankenstein. Or the Mad Hatter.

Abby grew closer to Patty, the boy and Kevin. With each step, the machine's wild metallic alertness burst into sharper octaves. The green colour it had settled on was already as bright as the safety setting would allow, but it was clear as she got nearer to the threesome that one of them was the root cause of the new anomaly.

Wide-eyed, Kevin stepped out from the bunch and raised a blunt finger to the green pulse. Abby opened her mouth to shout, in the milliseconds that time seemed to stand still, but she wasn't fast enough. A zap rang through the room and the smell of burnt hair quickly diffused through the enclosed space.

The boy shrieked.

Holtz dropped to her knees, preparing herself for CPR.

Then Patty shrieked, only not for the same reason. The boy's eyes were slated milky white; no pupils or irises. Just a hollow canvas, stripped of any soulful colour.

A thought struck Erin. Eyes are the windows to the soul.

Kevin sat bolt upright. Erin couldn't see his eyes from her position, but from the look of sheer aroused terror in Holtz's face she knew it was bad. Her face split down the middle, like a knife had cleaved it, and she smiled in that scary mad scientist way she gets when an experiment goes awfully awry.

The veins in his neck bulged like worms fighting to crawl out from under his skin. Tendons spitting upward, taunt against the tan stretch of his neck muscles, Kevin rotated his head inhumanly. Owlishly blinking, he continued to spin around until his face was directed at Erin and Abby. Holtz fell backwards, onto her hands, in amazement, and stared at the back of his head.

"Oh, not again. Hell to the _no_!" Patty dragged Holtz up by her armpits. "Holtzy. Take Coleman upstairs and tie him down if you have to," She ordered, "Erin, go with her!" She barked out.

Blowing her bangs out of her eyes, she skipped across Kevin's grotesquely splayed out form to reach Coleman and Holtz. They each took an arm but he was still, oddly peaceful, while Kevin began to violently quake.

"Uh, Patty!" Abby croaked, voice cracking as Kevin slithered his feet onto the floor to push his body backward and spring toward her like a striking cobra.

Patty grabbed him by the shoulders, taking no prisoners. "Yo, ghost, nobody hurts Kevin!" She hollered, slinging her arm back for a viciously stinging slap.

* * *

In Coleman's trance-like state, the two scientists led him up the winding staircase with minimal effort. He seemed to follow them without thought.

Holtz waved a hand in his face. "Interesting." She mumbled.

"It's like he's blind, mute and deaf." Erin commented, but Holtz shook her head. "What?"

Pressing her lips into a tight line, the other woman said, "On the contrary. I think he  _can_ see and hear us. He's just choosing not to respond."

"Why? Because of the ghost?"

Coleman stopped. He span on his heel, staring down the bottom of the stairs he had just climbed. The two Ghostbusters, on opposite sides of him on the landing, shared a knowing look and reached for his wrists. But he didn't jump, and he let them tug him backwards. His body was arched, as his feet remained planted on the marble landing. "Mommy and Daddy are here." He said, voice echoing. Almost as if multiple people had spoken over him.

Erin shivered.

* * *

Patty was on her third or fourth slap, Kevin's cheeks ripening to a baby pink, when dry lightning cackled outside. She paused, the back of her hand hovering in the air, as she looked around.

"It got dark pretty fast." Abby mumbled, her grip on her proton wand white-knuckled for when Kevin spat out the ghost inside him. "Keep smacking him, Patty, he's gotta belch out Caspar sooner or later."

She nodded, and firmly cracked the final hit. The ghost flurried out of Kevin's wide mouth in a jet of neon blues. Her sweeping hair thrashed out like a bundle of Medusa's snakes, vibrantly and viperously alive. It hissed at Patty, displaying a long line of carnivorous teeth that did not belong on a human girl of her age. Her innocent face broke apart in thick, charred lines of singed skin as she dove for Patty. From the look of her tattered nightgown, she had died in a fire. Tongues of brilliantly blue flame lit the hem of her skirt.

Knocked onto the flat of her back, her pack out of reach, Patty threw up her hands to protect her face.

A shock of blazing light sizzled against the ghost girl's shoulder, snaring around her to coil her into a protective proton bind. Abby thrust on her proton glove while keeping the girl at bay with her wand in the other hand. She reeled the girl back, like a fish on the flyline of a rod, and when the whirling azure-coloured girl was close enough Abby sucker-punched her in the chest. The sparks that flew from the impact immobilized the girl momentarily, before the particles were soared out of existence in a flash of proton orange.

Abby blew on her fist like a loaded gun. "Right on the titty."

Getting to her feet, Patty swung her proton pack back firmly onto her shoulder before raising her hand in the air. Abby went to smack it, when Patty pulled away with her eyebrows up high. "Hey, other hand." She reminded her, and Abby high-fived her with her non-proton punching hand.

The door of the house blew off its hinges, splintering past Abby and Patty to where Coleman's eyes were locked on at the foot of the staircase. When the thick wood shattered, his knees melted and his eyes shut. Both Holtz and Erin had startled when the two figures at the door had blasted it open, so when Coleman fainted and dove down the stairs neither woman could reach out. The two silhouettes, frolicking at the doorway, glided into the house. Erin screamed. Kevin ate up the distance between where he had been unconscious to where Coleman's swan dive ended. Although highly unrealistic and unlikely, Coleman fit snugly into Kevin's arms as he caught the falling man and held him close to his chest like you would a football. Kevin's rubber boots skid on the marble, and reluctantly landed on his ass with Coleman perched above him in steel-locked arms that reminded Erin of a Greek statue.

"Oh, for the love of fu--wantons."

"Fu-wantons?" Patty repeated incredulously. "What the hell is a fu-wanton?"

Abby said, "You know. Like a wanton but with fu. A fu-wanton."

"There is no such thing." Patty shook her head stubbornly.

"Is too!" Abby gaped.

Patty turned. "Never heard you order one from Benny." She pointed out, irrefutably.

"Benny's a moron. He wouldn't know a fu-wanton from a... regular... wanton." Abby insisted.

"Fine." Patty teased. "I'll ask him when we get home."

" _Enough_." The female silhouette announced, raising her palm upward. "Henry." She said soberly, to the black shadow beside her, "Get Lillian and James."

Coleman, in the scolding heat of Kevin's body, mumbled, "Henry. Jacobson?"

The murky outline snapped toward him. "Who dares call on me?"

"Who's Henry Jacobson?" Erin whispered, having chased Coleman down the stairs with Holtz. They both stood above where Kevin was snuggling Coleman.

"The first owner of this house." He answered. "He and his wife, Bertha, had two children but they all died in a fire because the townsfolk thought Bertha was a witch. Before Henry, she had two other husbands who died mysteriously." Coleman explained. "I'm technically related to her, she's the ancestor of my mom's step-father."

"James? Lillian?" Henry garbled, voice thick and warbled.

Patty shared a look with Abby. "Lillian." She mouthed, looking down at her proton glove.

Holtz flicked her thumb over the vacuum-like device she was hovering over. The thrum was slow to start, sparking alive none too discreetly. Bertha's eyes widened out of their scratchy sockets. She shot her hand up, a powerful wave jetting out from her fingertips. Holtz rolled to the side, seizing her wand, to escape the inferno Bertha had set on the machine.

"James!" Henry commanded.

Abby raised her wand, Patty following suit behind her. Erin fell into step with the other three women, lined up and armed. Abby cocked her wand. "Ready?" She screamed, at the top of her lungs.

Bertha smirked, her hand still out. The matte black of her eyes glinted. "James, how lovely of you to join us." She said warmly.

Erin threw a look over her shoulder. Coleman was in the air, a mystic glow surrounding him like the neon tendrils wishing out of Mr. and Mrs. Jacobson. His eyes were deathly blank again. Kevin was being propelled upwards, feet dangling futilely. Coleman's fist was closed tightly around Kevin's throat.

"Aw man, not Kevin!" Abby yelped. "See, this is why we shouldn't bring him." She orated to the other girls.

"Don't kill him, Jamie dear." Mrs. Jacobson said softly. That tender moment was strangely human. It didn't last very long. Her whole glowing spectral body snapped like a guitar string, orbs of white-hot energy seeping into her being.

"She's gathering _power_!" Erin clutched her proton wand.

"Holtzy, with me." Patty requested, spinning around to aim at Coleman. "Don't hit Kevin!" She advised.

Abby charged up her wand, hip-to-hip with Erin, while Holtz squeezed the trigger to launch a sizzling beam from her proton wand. Party's launched a moment later. The ghost in Coleman, James, panicked, and he whirred in the air with Kevin's blue-tinted face in his hand. Kevin dropped his sinewy arms, reaching around his waist. Patty loaded up a second beam. Holtz's hand covered the wand, and she pointed to where James was unstably zigzagging in the air. Patty watched as Kevin took out a proton taser from his back jeans pocket and jammed it under the rib cage of the unsuspecting ghost-possessed Coleman.

In cartoons, the electricity would zing through his body so that you could only see skeleton. In reality, Kevin's wavering arm pressed on the proton taser just long enough for Coleman's hairs to stand on end as James was expelled from the vessel it possessed. Patty and Holtz ran, this time they wouldn't be too late. Coleman's jaw seemed to unhinge, the ectoplasm lurching from the back of his throat as James span dazzlingly.

* * *

The wind screamed against me as I fell, again. Kevin was beside me, my hand on his arm. But the air that had broke around me softened as we made our landing in the middle of the staircase, two of the Ghostbusters propped up below us. Their precious packs to the side, as to not damage the only thing that could hurt the ghosts.

I mewled as James swam back towards me, viscous eyes and ectoplasm-dribbling mouth zooming toward me. Cowering into Kevin's chest, Holtz swung her arm out protectively over me. Patty reached for her pack, kicking with her legs to get there faster. Kevin jerked forward, sparkling orange bursting from his hand. A proton wand? It was lively electrified with the same light that their wands had, and he lobbed it into James's widely opened mouth. As he chucked it, he put both arms to each side of my head and leaned forward to shield me with his body.

Gasping, I watched as James dissipated with the bursting light that popped and crackled from within him. The exploding taser fried him from the inside, wet chunks and globs of his ghostly body raining down. Holtz, her goggles smudged, danced in the spattering pieces of ghost. She stuck her tongue out as if it were snowflakes and Patty smacked her arm.

"Gross." She mumbled.

Kevin pulled back from where he had been nosing my shoulder. My body was flat against his, no part of James splattered onto me. He smiled toothily at me and I swooned. Dipping down to his scrumptious lips, I pressed mine against his. It was a soft pressure at first, sweet and cushiony against his full pouty lips. Then the hunger roared awake and I spread open my thighs to accomdate his lean torso. He drilled into me, tongue and teeth and fiery passion that I could feel as hard as a cinderblock against my leg. I smiled into the kiss, my hands wiping down his shoulders as he rolled against me and pulled away.

"Kevin, you did it!" Patty whooped. Holtz smirked. "Oh, goddamn." She added awkwardly.

"Love is in the air!" Holtz announced, throwing her palms up as the last of James splotched down from the dripping ceiling.

I giggled and dropped my head against the fine slope of Kevin's shoulder. He licked my ear, and huskily whispered, "You taste like candy."

From across the room, Erin and Abby grunted in their efforts against Mr. and Mrs. Jacobson. "A little help over here, guys!" Abby screeched, ploughing her proton beam through the roof of my house in failed attempts to seize Berta. Erin wasn't having much luck against Henry either, as they twirled and pirouetted in the air mockingly to dodge the two Ghostbusters.

"Don't suppose you stole any more proton tasers from the lab?" Holtz asked. Kevin shook his head.

"Just the one." He said.

She sighed. "No problem." Turning to me, she stuck out her gloved hand and I took it. Pulling me to my feet, Holtz snicked on two tightly-cuffed bracelets on each of my wrists. "You're psychic, right?"

"What?"

"Like a medium?" Patty interjected.

"Sort of." I admitted. "I can hear and feel ghosts, but I can't see them if they don't want to be seen. Yet."

Holtz's facial expression was pure joy. "Brilliant. I've been adapting this to Erin, since she saw a ghost in her childhood that no one else did, but it should be amplified by your extra-sensory abilities." Nodding vehemently, she added, "You can do this, Bohn."

Kevin slapped my ass. "Yeah, babe."

"Wow." Patty sassed. "Romantic."

"Yeah, I am." Kevin said smugly, proud of himself, and went in for a second slap. I jolted each time, glaring at him.

Holtz clicked her fingers in front of me. "Focus. Just like we use these," She shook the wand, her tone rigid, "You can use those."

Kevin cleared his throat. Holtz chucked him a hand-sized firearm and he beamed.

* * *

Erin and Abby, back-to-back, circled each other trying to get a direct hit on one of the ghosts.

A third beam entwined with theirs, skimming Mrs. Jacobson's foot. Her wail shattered glass. But it was Holtz's direct aim that smashed through her chest as the line-up was complete. With his monochrome red converses and acid-washed jean shorts, Coleman stepped forward with his hands raised tentatively. Kevin watched as his bracelets began to glow, the concentration visible and palpable around him. Maybe it was something else, something entirely Other about Coleman that flourished with Holtz's shimmering bracelets, but it made him that much more mysteriously beautiful.

Bathed in the iridescent light of supernatural means, the girls watched as Coleman's power coalesced. The bracelets, clunky and searing hot, began to spin. Mrs. Jacobson hissed as her husband swooped down unceremoniously, the gust of wind from his incorporeal form fluttering Holtz and Patty back.

He stopped inches from Coleman's face. The sound of chains clinking and looping together was heard, and his body was drawn taut like they had imprisoned him. Coleman, still poised and on the balls of his feet, closed his out-stretched hands into fists. The ghost screamed, a raw sound that was echoed by his wife.

"Someone!" Coleman called out. Erin strapped her wand upward, Bertha Jacobson's talon-like fingernails barely itching her bangs as she stretched to impossibly grotesque angles to reach her husband. Abby seconded the proton beam, causing a cage-like barrier that crisscrossed through the ghost's body. The two Ghostbusters stood on quaking knees from the effort to keep the ghost at bay.

Holtz wolf-whistled at the miraculous encapture. 

"Continue!" Abby screeched. "We can't hold her off for long." She managed through clenched teeth.

"What?" Coleman, arms involuntarily shaking from the same force of keeping a ghost trapped. "Why don't you just bust the damn thing?"

Erin shook her head, bangs swaying. "You need to do it yourself."

"Fuck that! Kevin!"

Coleman, invisible chains racking Mr. Jacobson down, tossed his hands in the air. Kevin cocked the proton gun, took aim and blasted a fist-sized energy ball through the ghost's right eye. Patty screamed, at the top of her lungs, as it deteriorated in a fine shower of ick and goo. Holtz experimentally licked a finger covered in it, then shivered.

"Sour." She mumbled.

"I got one!" Kevin triumphantly chanted.

Mrs. Jacobson fell to the floor. Her shimmering gown flicked upward, embers sparking the wide hem and coarsing through the material until it was engulfed in fast, sharp flames. Abby and Erin, lit by the heated orange burn, stepped back, their wands ceasing fire from the inferno of the ghost's grief. Her dress was burning into a matte black, eyes a sheer devil red, and a widow's veil materialised behind her blonde bob. "The Widow Ghost." Abby named. She threw her hands up, casting spontaneous rings of fire around Abby and Erin.

Patty ran to them, stomping on the thin flickers that were roaring into high knife-like flames. She coughed, wheezing, and Holtz leaped in front of Coleman. The Widow simply whipped her hand out, wrist clicking as she did, and the blonde genius soared through the air to crash-land on the rickety stairs.

Her sights were set on Coleman.

* * *

I opened my mouth to scream for help. The Widow's lipstick-bled smile trickled goosebumps up the back of my neck. No sound came from my throat, as much as I pushed my lungs to vocalize the terror I was feeling. She slithered toward me, her eyes burning right into the pit of my stomach. I heard Kevin's steps come from my left, but she waved her hand and a second later I heard a splintering and a groan. My neck couldn't turn, my eyes were fixed onto hers. Every fiber of my being was frozen.

"Coleman!" Patty's voice swam through my head like she was underwater. "Run!"

The Widow stretched my mouth open with her claws, slinging her dress inside one leg at a time. My muteness stopped me from sounding my gags, but I still felt it in my body as she invaded me and flexed inside me like she owned me. The feeling of being possessed wasn't like I was gone and she had taken over, more like she had momentarily shoved me to the side while she dominated my body for a while. I could see, hear, smell, taste and feel again but I wasn't in  _control_ as much as I fought against what she willed me to do.

As I stepped toward Patty and the flames circling Abby and Erin, I shouted at my brain to stop me. The electricity of my nerves and brain communicating jolted through me, and I made sure the pain was felt in my body. We dropped to my knees. Her frustration was clear to me, even though we couldn't speak as we fought to pilot my body. Inwardly, it was like a spiritual tug of war. Outwardly, my body thrashed side-to-side and I rolled on the floor.

Patty got enough of the flames to die out to let Erin jump through the ring. The two of them kicking at the spitting fire Abby was trapped behind made it easier for her to make it through without being singed. I felt them near me, touch me, talk to me, but as much as I tried to let them know the nearer to me the more dangerous it was they just didn't understand.

Whatever power I had merged with Mrs. Jacobson's. My body cracked to life, floating to the chandelier in a bridal position with no one holding me. A ghostly green glow emanated from my stomach, and I doubled over as I felt urgently sick. I opened my mouth to warn them, to cry out. A burp sounded, tailed by a moss green flame.

"He's going to throw up the ghost!" Erin claimed. "We gotta get out of here."

"We can't leave him alone with that thing." Abby chastised.

Erin rolled her eyes. "If I get any throw-up on me..." She warned, waggling her finger in the air. I hoped my face conveyed that I was as apologetic as I felt. Bertha wafted out of me, one hot emerald blaze at a time.

"He's not throwing her up, he's belching her out." Patty said. "Gross, dude."

My body was on fire. I felt my skin prickle to life, the color of the flames mirrored on my hands and spreading quickly. I watched as it happened, viciously quickly, and feared the day I'd co-star in  _Wicked_ on Broadway.

Holtz bolted upright. "He's alive. He's  _alive_!" She raged, getting to her feet. "And he's going to blow so someone help me with Kev."

"What?" Patty snapped. "How do you know he's going to blow up?"

"He'll be fine, he won't get burned. It's his body's way of dealing with the unwanted ghost presence." She explained.

Erin said, "So if he doesn't get burned, and the ghost does, doesn't that mean the flame only extinguishes matter on the other plane?"

Holtz contemplated this comically, holding Kevin's unconscious head up. "Oh." She lamented. "Yeah, guess you're right."

Abby checked her watch. "When exactly is it going to--"

I exploded.

* * *

The fire truck parked next to the Ghostbusters Hearse. The news outlet van parked on the curb. The men and women who got out watched as Abby Yates, Erin Gilbert, Jillian Holtzmann and Patty Tolan slow-mo walked out of the charred mansion, posing on the lawn. Holtz dropped to the floor and flopped to her bellt, chin in her hand, as the other three posed, Erin and Abby back-to-back with fingerguns, and Patty holding hers upright. The camera that was on them switched to the man walking out behind them. They deflated, but didn't move.

"We practiced that so many times." Abby growled, lips barely moving.

"When can we stop?" Patty whispered.

Behind them, silhouetted and heroically framed by the new's camera, Kevin erupted from the house. Shirtless. Bare-chested. And in his arms was Coleman. His bracelets were no longer green, or red. There was no supernaturality around. Except for him. Erin watched fondly as Kevin carried him out. He had been so brave, so strong. And she definitely wanted to keep him around. Coleman, not Kevin.

As Kevin stepped over the threshold, smiling blindly for the cameras with his Hollywood white teeth, Coleman's head banged against the doorframe.

"Motherfucker!"

"Oh, the baby's up." Abby said dryly, dropping her pose. The others followed suit, walking up to where he was violently shaking out of Kevin's arms. He landed on his feet, like a cat, and shot back up.

"We get it," He told Kevin, "You have nice abs!" Coleman turned around, shaking his head impatiently and walking toward the Ghostbusters. Kevin looked down at his washboard abs and thick pecs happily, rubbing his seemingly-oiled muscles in satisfaction. The camera couldn't get enough of him.

Abby touched his shoulder. "How're you feeling?"

"Any nausea?" Erin asked.

Coleman shook his head. "I'm good. Can you get these things off, though?" He asked Holtz, shaking his bracelets. She rubbed the back of her neck awkwardly.

Sucking in a breath, she said, "See, the thing with those is... They're a last resort. I planned on slapping them on once and them breaking, so..."

"They're never coming off?" Coleman's jaw was dangling by his shoelaces.

Holtz shrugged. Erin slapped her arm. "Not  _never_." She corrected. "Right, Holtz?"

She rubbed her chin. "I suppose I could see what I could do at the lab." Throwing her arm over Coleman's neck, she added, "How do you feel about very dangerous lasers?"

Abby and Erin watched as Kevin followed them, offering to carry Coleman to the car.

"God, he looks even better from the back." Erin moaned. 

"Too bad he's not straight." Abby said. "He and Coleman do make a cute couple, though." Holtz watched with scientific fascination as Kevin's tongue met Coleman's. "Maybe we shouldn't..."

"Yeah, it's weird." Erin said, laughing with her colleague and best friend. "PDAs freak me out. Where's Patty?"

"Right here." Patty said, gasping. "I just got off the phone with my college's dean. They moved up our final exam, we gotta haul ass ladies!"

"You're in college?"

"You didn't think I was just a history buff, did you?" Patty asked. "I mean, I  _am_ but working at the MTA was the only flexible work schedule I could find as I finished class and finally got my phD. Did you not hear me the first time, we gotta go!"

"Holtz!" Erin called out.

"Already on it." She answered, switching on the siren of the car. Kevin, still shirtless, and Coleman were making out on the roof of it.

"Wow, Kevin's got game." Abby muttered.

"Wait, why's he--" Patty said.

"Oh, no." Erin closed her eyes. Holtz just watched. She shot him a thumbs up. "No, no thumbs up, that's public indecency!" Erin roared.

"Someone's jelly." Patty bumped her shoulder. "You get some, Kev!"

"Don't you have a final to get to?" Erin reminded her.

"What're you filming, huh lady?" Abby threw her fist into the camera's lens.

"Abby, no!" Erin lurched forward but it was too late. The proton glove smashed the glass, then detonated in a brazenly garish display of ghostbusting scintillation.

**Author's Note:**

> Creatures like us, can't be alone  
> Creatures like us, we freak (you know)  
> Something's got you up all night  
> So tell me who you're gonna call (yeah)  
> I bet you never saw it coming."
> 
> G-Eazy - Saw It Coming ft. Jeremih


End file.
